Blek Le Rat (Xavier Prou) was born on 15th November 1951 in Paris. From 1971 - 76 he studied etching, lithography, and painting at the "Ecole nationals superieure des Beaux-arts de Paris". From 1976 - 82 he studied architecture at "Unite pedagogique d'architecture No 6" in Paris.  From 1981 to 2006 his work has focused on urban art in different cities of the world.  He is the pioneer of stencil graffiti art, introducing the technique into graffiti in Paris in 1981 and now followed by many artists across the world including UK based Banksy.  He introduced to the urban art landscape the concept of creating life size figures of people. He is thought by many to be the father of stencil graffiti as an art form.  He did not want to imitate the American graffiti that he had seen originally in New York in 1971.  He wanted to have his own street style.  He began to spray some small rats because rats are the only wild living animals in cities and only rats will survive when the human race will have disappeared and died out.  Here is a pdf copy of an article which appeared in The Big Issue on 6th November 2006 - page1 and page 2   Here is an article published in The Antiques Trade Gazette 10/03/07

"Everytime I think I've painted something slightly original, I find out that Blek Le Rat has done it as well. Only twenty years earlier" Banksy 2005